In 1969, A.C. and Penney Hubbard had no inkling that the garden they would create at their home north of Baltimore would become recognized as one of the finest in Maryland.

Welcome to our News from On Walnut Hill

Welcome to the blog by Penney and Kathy. On it we will write about events around the book and in the Hubbard garden. We’ll pass on some advice and share stories of interesting gardens and garden people as well as the good, bad and ugly in the plant world.

Remembering Ingrid Ernestl (1965-2018), Great Gardener and Friend. In 1994 a friend called and asked if we would like to have some help in the garden. My husband and I were in our 50s and realized that we […]

A year ago we planted a stand of Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium dubium ‘Little Joe’) in a sunny spot on the path down to the garden. Fireworks of colorful purple blooms are the result this late summer. We love the late bloom time because of the color it adds to our garden and the pollinators […]

Big leaves. Tall plants. Prodigious blooms. More than nine inches of rain in the past six weeks have created a Rosseau-esque vision on Walnut Hill. Our plants look as if we’ve treated them with major fertilizer, but we have not. Not since June 2014, when Roger Foley documented our early summer gardens for the book, […]

On a recent trip to Longwood Gardens, my sister and I went with her goddaughter and family. We thought of our early trips to the rose gardens there with our parents and grandmother. Never would we have imagined we’d end up as gardeners ourselves or repeat trips with the next generation. At Longwood I thought […]

While our goal used to be leaf-free by Christmas, we’ve come to do much less fall cleanup. We now do one leaf gathering before Thanksgiving and let the remaining leaves (there are plenty of latecomers) rest on the beds until spring. This way we have minimal disruption and, as new growth emerges, we remove […]

Few things invigorate on a 96-degree Baltimore day. Our garden being the first stop on the three-day summer expedition of the prestigious Hortus Club of New York did just that. With membership limited to 30 horticulturalists from the finest nurseries, botanical gardens, arboretums, and universities in New York, the level of experience and knowledge among […]

In the 1990s, when our hillside was terraced and the gardens were transformed, no automatic irrigation system was installed. We made that decision, because sprinkler systems need frequent monitoring and maintenance. We were concerned that when we travelled, an automatic system might malfunction and flood the new gardens. Plants can drown where puddles form. Too […]

We hosted our last spring garden tour this week. After a full schedule of tours on Walnut Hill, we took one ourselves. Kathy leads bus trips to private gardens twice a year for the Kaleidoscope program of Roland Park Country School. A recent one included two Baltimore County gardens Penney had never seen, and one […]

We’ve had another full spring season of garden tours. Every group brings enthusiastic gardeners and plant nuts like us. A bonus for us is learning something new each time. Recently, with the Roslyn Garden Club came the esteemed Alan Summers. Summers is the former owner of the still-missed Carroll Gardens in Westminster, MD and longtime […]

As if it knew that the annual meeting of the Garden Club of America were beginning in Baltimore this week, the Davidia involucrata (dove tree or handkerchief tree) has bloomed for the second time since it was planted. Welcome, GCA! We look forward to seeing about 30 delegates in our garden the day before meetings […]

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Remembering Ingrid Ernestl (1965-2018), Great Gardener and Friend Three wonderful women who’ve all gardened with us. Left to right: Ingrid Ernestl, Teresa Smith, Fran West In 1994 a friend called and asked if we would like to have some help in the garden. My husband and I were in our 50s and realized that we […]

A year ago we planted a stand of Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium dubium ‘Little Joe’) in a sunny spot on the path down to the garden. Fireworks of colorful purple blooms are the result this late summer. We love the late bloom time because of the color it adds to our garden and the pollinators […]

Big leaves. Tall plants. Prodigious blooms. More than nine inches of rain in the past six weeks have created a Rosseau-esque vision on Walnut Hill. Our plants look as if we’ve treated them with major fertilizer, but we have not. Not since June 2014, when Roger Foley documented our early summer gardens for the book, […]